We saw the Central American Agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) several times while walking in the gardens of the Lodge at Pico Bonito in Honduras. These hystricomorph rodents are diurnal and live as mongamous pairs. Most times we saw one it was carrying one of these large seed pods.
After my article on the artist Commander Alfred Marcus Hughes appeared, Greg Davies commented:
Hughes also makes a cameo appearance in Beryl Patricia Hall's autobiography "A Hawk from a Handsaw" (1993). Hall was the doyenne of the British Museum Bird Room in the post-war III period, and a relative of Hughes.
On looking up Hughes and Hall I found that they were first cousins, once removed. Pat Hall was the grand-daughter of Hughes’s mother’s brother.
The comment also rang a bell in my neural circuitry. I was sure I could remember meeting Pat Hall but could not recall where and how. Then, looking her up to write this article, I found a photograph which provided all the answers. The date was 4 May 1972 when she received the Stamford Raffles Award at the AGM of the Zoological Society of London. I remember speaking to her briefly after the meeting when she seemed a bundle of nerves. For some strange reason on seeing the photograph I immediately remembered the coat she was wearing as being several sizes too big such that she and the coat seemed moved independently—a very weird thing to recall from the memory bank after 52 years.
 |
| Pat Hall receiving the Stamford Raffles Award from the President of the Zoological Society of London, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. 4 May 1972 (Annual Report for 1972, ZSL) |
Pat Hall was Beryl Patricia Hall (née Woodhouse). She was born to a wealthy family in Epson, Surrey, in 1917. She was thwarted by her parents in going to Cambridge to study maths and instead spent four years at home kicking her heels but also developing an interest in birdwatching. Thus in the 1939 Register, the emergency census, she is shown as employed on ‘domestic duties’ but also as involved in Air Raid Precautions work teaching ambulance drivers. She was determined to do something for the war effort and joined the Mechanised Transport Corps, a uniformed women’s civilian organisation that provided drivers to government departments and other civilian services.
After the outbreak of war Pat Hall became engaged to John Clavell Hall, in civilian life a Winchester-educated insurance clerk. He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in March 1940 and posted to the Middle East. Pat volunteered to serve overseas driving ambulances. She was first in South Africa but was then moved to Egypt. The two were married on 21 May 1941 at Suez. However, this was no happily-ever-after story. By June 1943 John Hall had fought in Crete. was a temporary Captain and had been mentioned in despatches. However later that year he was captured during the Battle of Leros in the Dodecanese Campaign. Pat further developed her interest in birds in North Africa and ended the war in Italy still driving ambulances. After the war the marriage broke down and it was then that Hughes must have offered his help.
Alfred Hughes was a friend of the Norman Boyd Kinnear of the Natural History Museum. Kinnear, with no academic qualifications, had risen through the ranks of the museum world, beginning at the Bombay Natural History Society’s museum in Calcutta and continuing at the Natural History Museum in London. He had specialised in ornithology. By the time the war was ending he had been appointed Keeper of Zoology. In 1947 he was asked to take over as Director, past the normal retirement age, until a suitable candidate had been found in the post-war world. He stayed on as Director until 1950, sorting out the repair and restoration of the Museum needed after the disruption and damage caused by the War; for this he received a ‘K’.
Through that contact with Kinnear, Pat Hall was offered a post of Associate Scientific Worker in the Bird Room of the Museum. Ideally suited for those wealthy enough not needing to find paid employment, the scheme provided cheap and enthusiastic voluntary labour to the Museum. The position was paid at a rate—which did not change for ten years—of four shillings per hour, a wage which would have exceeded the average industrial pay in the 1940s. However, instead of that equating to a salary of around £800 per year, the maximum pay each year was capped at £100. Pat Hall was clearly keen to work at the Museum; she turned down a job offer from the BBC in order to work at the Museum.
James David Macdonald (1908-2002) was in charge of the Bird Room. He recognised her aptitude for the work she was doing and given her experience in Africa and her skills as a motor mechanic invited her, at her own expense, to be a member of a collecting expedition to south-west Africa that began in late 1949. The team, including Macdonald’s wife as the team doctor and cook, collected 1300 specimens of nearly 200 species during the six months in the field. After that for nearly 20 years Pat Hall divided her time between curatorial work, collecting expeditions and research based on the collections in the Museum. Her expeditions during the 1950s were to Africa. In 1953 she organised and largely funded a Natural History Museum-backed trip to what is now Botswana. Before and after an ornithological congress in Livingstone in what is now Zambia, she collected in Botswana and Angola respectively; overall she collected around 2000 specimens for the Museum. A short trip to north-western Botswana was her final experience of collecting in Africa.
Her publications during the 1950s and 60s were on African birds. Her largest was the outcome of eight years of work: An Atlas of Speciation in African Passerine Birds in 1970. Of 423 pages with 439 maps it was widely praised by reviewers. Herbert Friedmann (1900-1987) the American ornithologist who worked at the Smithsonian Institution wrote of its importance in The Auk of July 1971:
As Mrs. Hall states at the beginning of her introduction, this great series of maps constitutes the first attempt to show in graphic form, for the ready comprehension of the student, the results, "and the continuing process, of evolution in a large continental avifauna by means of plotting on one map the distribution of species believed to be immediately descended from a common ancestor." By placing closely related species on the same map it becomes evident where they overlap and where the are allopatric, and these facts give the field student indications of where to look and what to study in an attempt to assess and to interpret the past history of each of these current distributional patterns. It must be kept in mind, when using this atlas, that every existing specific distributional picture is not merely a discrete fact of local interest, but is always, and inevitably, the result of the past history of the species and of the region. This is the real, inherent interest in each of them, and each could become a valid point of departure for further study of the evolutionary vicissitudes of the particular species.
The Atlas had started as a joint effort with Reginald Ernest Moreau (1897–1970) the great amateur scientific ornithologist of his day. However, he became increasingly ill and the work fell on Mrs Hall. He died in the year of its publication.
Work on African birds was interrupted in the early 1960s. Macdonald heard of and then approached Harold Hall (no relation to Pat) an Australian philanthropist who was interested in supporting research. Harold Hall agreed to sponsor a series of five expeditions for the Natural History Museum (still labouring under the title of British Museum (Natural History)) around Australia. Macdonald was very keen to obtain more specimens for the Museum. The number of Australian specimens available within Britain had been depleted by the sale of Lord Rothschild’s collection (Rothschild was being blackmailed by a ‘titled lady’ and he needed the money) and another private collection to the USA.
Pat Hall led the third Harold Hall Expedition given her experience of collecting in arid parts of Africa. That was to the interior of Western and South Australia. She then edited the book describing the findings of all five expeditions which was published in 1974.
After the post-war recovery the Natural History Museum on its site in London was bursting at the seams with many thousands of specimens stored in unsuitable accommodation. In the mid-1960s, plans emerged to move the bird collection from South Kensington to the site of the Rothschild Museum at Tring in Hertfordshire. Pat Hall was opposed to the move on scientific grounds. It is easy to see why. She would also have had to move from Surrey to somewhere nearer Tring. She therefore decided to give up her work at the Museum in 1971. At the same time she moved from Epsom to the New Forest in Hampshire where it was noted she devoted her time ‘to friends, dogs, horses and village life’. However, retirement from the ornithological world in which she was well known came more gradually. She was in demand as an editor, speaker and organiser. What appears to have been her last job was presidency of the 4th Pan-African Ornithological Congress in 1976. That caused her particular hassles because of its move at the last minute from Kenya to the Seychelles over political problems.
It was said that the award which gave her particular pleasure was the Stamford Raffles Award of the Zoological Society of London for 1971—presented by the Society’s President, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at the Annual General Meeting I attended in 1972. This is how the Annual Report recorded it:
The Stamford Raffles Award (awarded to an amateur zoologist for distinguished contributions to zoology) to Mrs B. P. Hall, British Museum (Natural History), in recognition of her work on the taxonomy and zoogeography of birds, particularly those of Africa. The award was a sculpture in bronze, Wild Boar, by Miss Elisabeth Frink.
It was though the final paragraph of citation for the Union Medal of the British Ornithologists’ Union that best sums up what she had achieved:
Her scientific work has already been widely recognised, by her election as Corresponding Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union, and by the awards of the Gill Memorial Medal of the South African Ornithological Society and the Stamford Raffles Award of the Zoological Society of London. It is most fitting that the Union Medal should now be awarded to Pat Hall, who has so strikingly shown that the heights of ornithological achievement can still be scaled without the benefit of formal academic qualifications and institutional backing.
I wonder if Alfred Hughes realised that in speaking to his friend Kinnear he was launching his cousin Pat Hall on a pathway to her becoming a major player in classical ornithology of the 20th century. The Hughes-Hall family axis runs wide and deep in the ornithology of Africa and Asia.
Beryl Patricia Hall died on 4 August 2010 in a nursing home at Fishbourne, Hampshire.
Prys-Jones R. 2011. Beryl Patricia Hall (née Woodhouse), 1917-2010. Ibis 153, 913-914.
Last month we saw this American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) in the lower reaches of the Rio Cuero, Honduras, just about in the centre of its geographical range.
The American Crocodile prefers the somewhat saline waters of estuaries and mangroves and in this respect resembles the Estuarine or Saltwater Crocodile (C. porosus) of south-east Asia and northern Australia, a story I will return to in my Salt Glands Revisited series. It is also one of the largest species of crocodilian.
Basking with the mouth open—and thereby showing their very impressive set of teeth—appears to be concerned mainly with thermoregulation. Under the sun the head warms more quickly than the bulky body. Evaporative cooling from the tissues lining the mouth will lower the temperature of venous blood leaving the head. Provided there is a countercurrent arrangement whereby arterial blood entering the head is cooled by the venous blood passing in the opposite direction the brain will be kept relatively cool while the rest of the body gets to the optimum temperature. That’s the standard story but I have not checked whether or not there has been any experimental demonstration of the cooling in action. The reason I wonder, is that if, during basking, the blood from the body is relatively cool why the high rate of blood flow to the brain does not also keep the brain cool without the need for evaporative cooling? Or does the head get so hot that cooler blood from the body is insufficient to prevent the brain from suffering heat damage? Somebody who knows a lot more about crocodiles and their thermal physiology will put me right.
We asked if the crocodiles were dangerous to the human population especially the children. We were told not. Salties or Nile Crocodiles they are not.
George Cuvier in 1807 was the first to describe the American Crocodile but considered it another species of alligator. It took another Frenchman, the brilliant but mercurial Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, then working in the USA, to suggest in 1822 that it was not alligator but a crocodile.
 |
| Crocodylus acutus Distribution Achim Raschka BB BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia Commons |
The crassness of modern life is sometimes exemplified by the ‘tech’ companies that make their business the distribution of scientific papers from the past and present and an attempt to be the site of discussion between scientists.
I was sent a link by one of their regular and too frequent emails drawing my attention to a paper by Samuel Brody (with Arthur Chester Ragsdale, 1890-1969, and Charles Wesley Turner, 1897-1975). The last time I actually read that paper was as an old-fashioned pre-Xerox photocopy made in the 1950s in the collection of a late colleague. How nice to read it again and within milliseconds it was downloaded. But then came a the follow-up seconds later inviting me to thank the author and to tell him what had sparked my interest in the paper. There was though a problem. The author had died in 1956 so where was the message to be sent? The same place as emails to Santa Claus?
It is difficult to appreciate the mindset of those who think the science they are interested in began within the last ten years. Especially that is when they are encouraged to think so by PhD supervisors, as, regrettably, is the case even in UK here we once had a more rigorous respect for knowing the literature.
So I shall not be writing to thank Sam Brody but it is worth pointing out who he was and why the research he did is still important.
 |
| Sam Brody ca 1930 when he was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1929 and 1931 From here |
A second area of research in which Sam Brody is remembered is for his demonstration that the frequency of milking in dairy animals leads to an increase in the rate of milks secretion. The mechanism by which that happens kept me occupied for many years and has particular application in not only dairy animals but also in human lactation where the frequency and completeness of milk removal are key determinants of breastfeeding success.
Samuel Brody was professor of dairy husbandry in the University of Missouri. He was born in Lithuania in 1890. He emigrated to Canada in 1906 where he worked as a machinist, miner, fisherman and door-to-door salesman. He then obtained a place across the border as a student at the National Agricultural School in Pennsylvania. Hearing of great things happening at the University of California at Berkeley he had to teach himself to read and write in English in order to pass the entrance exam and study there. He graduated in 1917 in biochemistry. Following a masters he spent a short time in the US Air Force and worked in the University of California until he appointed to his post in Missouri in 1920. He died in his office in August 1956.
Brody’s work on growth, metabolism, thyroid function and milk production established his international reputation—which leads me on to my second point. It is little recognised that advances in human reproductive physiology in particular and in human health generally have been made under the aegis of funding for agricultural research. With that funding drastically reduced in recent decades, particularly in UK, that generation of new knowledge has ceased—yet another reason for condemning successive governments and devolved administrations for following the mantra of its unimportance with agriculture only being responsible for 2% of GDP but ignoring the rather important matter of national food security and its 100% role in keeping people alive.
Meanwhile the crassness continues. In requesting that I ask co-authors to join, a list is provided of those not belonging. That list includes one who has been dead for 49 years.
This superb Long-tailed Skink (Eutropis longhicaudata) joined AJP for luch in Victoria Park, Hong Kong, last week. It is the largest skink that occurs in Hong Kong, reaching 40 cm in length. It occurs in south-east Asia, from Malaysia in the south to southern China and Taiwan in the north.
Fifty years ago the late Jim Linzell and I were writing our monograph, Salt Glands in Birds and Reptiles, for the Physiological Society's Monograph Series; it was published in May 1975. In this series I revisit some of the topics and people who followed up the discovery of salt glands in birds by Knut Schmidt-Nielsen.
I was sad to find that Maryanne Robinson Hughes had died in 2020 just short of her 90th birthday. Maryanne was in right at the beginning of the discovery of salt glands in birds since she was Knut Schmidt-Nielsen’s PhD student at Duke University in North Carolina and in 1958 was a co-author of the second full paper, with Knut and Ragnar Fänge, to appear on salt glands in birds in which they established the nervous control of the gland.
An obituary online written by one of her three children, together with a page on ancestry.com provides an outline of her life. Maryanne Elizabeth Robinson was born on 27 December 1930 in Binghampton, New York. She was educated at Binghampton Central High School and Harpur College. A masters and PhD at Duke then followed. Her PhD was awarded in 1962 but from newspaper articles on her engagement it would seem that while writing up she had been employed as a research assistant in the physiology department of the University of Washington in Seattle. On 26 August 1961 she married Gilbert C Hughes (1933-2010) in New York; they went to live in Kansas where Gil was an assistant professor. In 1964 the moved across the Canadian border, Gil to the Department of Botany of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver where he worked on marine fungi. I remember Maryanne telling me that with a young family she first worked part-time in the Department of Zoology where she stayed until retirement. Maryanne died in a care home in Vancouver on 10 December 2020.
I met Maryanne only once; at a dinner with Gil, during the Physiological Congress on the UBC Campus in Vancouver, where I chaired a session on salt glands, a memorable occasion (the dinner not the session) with them both in fine form. Maryanne continued working on birds with salt glands for her entire career with a string of postgraduate students and other collaborators. She was particularly concerned with the integration of function of all the organs and tissues concerned with osmoregulation and water balance, a very difficult job given the nature of urinary excretion and the admixture of urine and faeces in the hindgut of birds.
I have gathered Maryanne’s publications in the following list from my own records and all the usual sources. Her first paper was published when she was 27; her last when she was 76. However, because the indexing services often miss (even with the benefit of machine-learning) many publications in books and conference proceedings, the list may not be complete. Some of Maryanne’s papers in my own records have not been picked up.
Maryanne Robinson Hughes: Publications 1958-2007
Fänge R, Schmidt-Nielsen K, Robinson M. 1958. Control of secretion from the avian salt gland. American Journal of Physiology 195, 321-326.
Hughes MR. 1962. Studies on renal and extrarenal salt excretion in gulls and terns. PhD thesis, Duke University, North Carolina.
Goldstein DL, Hughes MR, Braun EJ. 1966. Role of the lower intestine in the adaptation of gulls (Larus glaucescens) to sea water. Journal of Experimental Biology 123, 345-357.
Hughes MR. 1968. Renal and extrarenal excretion in the common tern Sterna hirundo. Physiological Zoölogy 41, 210-219.
Hughes MR, Ruch FE. 1968. Sodium and potassium in the tears and salt gland secretion of saline acclimatized ducks. Proceedings of the International Union of Physiological Sciences 7, 204 (24th International Congress, Washington, D.C.).
Hughes MR. 1969. Ionic and osmotic concentration of tears of the gull, Larus glaucescens. Canadian Journal of Zoology 47, 1337-1339.
Hughes MR, Ruch FE. 1969. Sodium and potassium in spontaneously produced salt-gland secretion and tears of ducks, Anas platyrhynchos, acclimated to fresh and saline waters. Canadian Journal of Zoology 47, 1133-1138.
Hughes MR. 1970. Flow rate and cation concentration in salt gland secretions of the glaucous-winged gull, Larus glaucescens. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology 32, 807-812.
Hughes MR. 1970. Relative kidney size in nonpasserine birds with functional salt glands. Condor 72, 164-168.
Hughes MR. 1970. Some observations on ion and water balance in the puffin, Fratercula arctica. Canadian Journal of Zoology 48, 479-482.
Hughes MR. 1970. Cloacal and salt-gland ion excretion in the seagull, Larus glaucescens, acclimated to increasing concentrations of sea water. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology 32, 315-25.
Hughes MR. 1972. The effect of salt gland removal on cloacal ion and water excretion in the growing kittiwake, Rissa tridactyla. Canadian Journal of Zoology 50, 603-610.
Hughes MR. 1972. Hypertonic salt gland secretion in the glaucous-winged gull, Larus glaucescens, in response to stomach loading with dilute sodium chloride. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 41. 121-127.
Hughes MR, Blackman JG. 1973. Cation content of salt gland secretion and tears in the Brolga, Grus rubicundus (Perry) (Aves: Gruidae). Australian Journal of Zoology 21, 515-518.
Hughes MR. 1974. Water content of the salt glands and other avian tissues. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 47, 1089-1093.
Hughes MR. 1975. Salt gland secretion produced by the gull, Larus glaucescens in response to stomach loads of different sodium and potassium concentration. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 51, 909-913. Ruch FE Jr, Hughes MR. 1975. The effects of hypertonic sodium chloride injection on body water distribution in ducks (An as platyrhynchos), gulls (Larus glaucesens) and roosters (Gallus domesticus). Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 52, 21-28.
Hughes MR. 1976. Effect of glucose on salt gland secretion in the glaucous-winged gull, Larus glaucescens. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 53, 311-312.
Hughes MR. 1976. The effects of salt water adaptation on the Australian black swan, Cygnus atratus (Latham). Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 55, 271-277.
Hughes MR. 1977. Observations on osmoregulation in glaucous-winged gulls, Larus glaucescens, following removal of the supraorbital salt glands. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology 37A, 281-287.
Walter A, Hughes MR. 1978. Total body water volume and turnover rate in fresh water and sea water adapted glaucous-winged gulls, Larus glaucescens. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology 61A, 233-237.
Hughes MR. 1980. Glomerular filtration rate in saline acclimated ducks, gulls and geese. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology 65A, 211-213.
Roberts JR, Hughes MR. 1983. Glomerular filtration rate and drinking rate in Japanese Quail, Coturnix coturnix japonica, in response to acclimation to saline water. Canadian Journal of Zoology 61, 2394-2398.
Roberts JR, Hughes MR. 1983. The effect of saline acclimation on water and sodium transport across the small intestine of ducklings, gulls and quail. American Zoologist 23, 1014.
Roberts JR, Hughes MR. 1984. Exchangeable sodium pool size and sodium turnover in freshwater- and saltwater-acclimated ducks and gulls. Canadian Journal of Zoology 62, 2142-2145.
Roberts JR, Hughes MR. 1984. Saline acclimation and water and sodium transport across avian small intestine. American Journal of Physiology 247, R246-249.
Hughes MR. 1987. The effects of ureteral resistance on gull urine composition and flow rate. Canadian Journal of Zoology 65, 2669-2671.
Hughes MR, Roberts JR, Thomas BR. 1987. Total body water and Its turnover in free-living nestling glaucous-winged gulls with a comparison of body water and water flux in avian species with and without salt glands. Physiological Zoology 60, 481-491.
Conway GL, Hughes MR, Moldenhauer RR. 1988. Extrarenal salt excretion in clapper and king rails. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 91, 671-674.
Hammons RL, Hughes MR, Moldenhauer RR. 1988. Body water and water flux in fresh water and sea-water acclimated clapper rails, Rallus longirostris. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 91, 539-541.
Hughes MR, Roberts JR, Thomas BR. 1989. Renal function in freshwater and chronically saline-stressed male and female Pekin ducks. Poultry Science 68, 408-416.
Hughes MR. 1989. Extracellular fluid volume and the initiation of salt gland secretion in ducks and gulls. Canadian Journal of Zoology 64, 194-197.
Hughes MR, Chadwick A. (Editors) 1989. Progress in Avian Osmoregulation. Leeds: Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.
Hughes MR. 1989. Stimulus for avian salt gland secretion. In, Progress in Avian Osmoregulation. Edited by MR Hughes and A Chadwick, pp 143-161. Leeds: Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.
Hughes MR, Kasserra C, Thomas BR. 1990. Effect of externally applied bunker fuel on body mass and temperature, plasma concentration, and water flux of Glaucous-winged Gulls, Larus glaucescens. Canadian Journal of Zoology 68, 716-721.
Hughes MR, Winkler D. 1990. Osmoregulation in nestling California gulls at Mono Lake, California. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 95, 567-571.
Kasserra CE, Jones DR, Hughes MR. 1991. Acid-base disturbance and ventilatory response to changes in plasma osmolality in Pekin ducks. Respiration Physiology 85, 383-393.
Hughes MT, Zenteno-Savin T, Kojwang D. 1991. Effects of saline acclimation and cecal ligation on body water and water flux in male and female Pekin ducks. Canadian Journal of Zoology 69, 771-775.
Hughes MR, Kojwang D, Zenteno-Savin T. 1992. Effects of caecal ligation and saline acclimation on plasma concentration and organ mass in male and female Pekin ducks, Anas platyrhynchos. Journal of Comparative Physiology B 162, 625-631.
Bennett DC, Bowes VA, Hughes MR, Hart LE. 1992. Suspected sodium toxicity in hand-reared great blue heron (Ardea herodias) chicks. Avian Diseases. 36, 743-748.
Kojwang D, Hughes MR. 1993 High dietary sodium chloride and body temperature in the domestic fowl and the glaucous-winged gull. Journal of Comparative Physiology B 163, 421-426. Hughes MR, Goldstein DL, Raveendran L. 1993. Osmoregulatory responses of glucous-winged gulls (Larus glaucescens) to dehydration and hemorrhage. Journal of Comparative Physiology B. 163, 524-31.
Hughes MR. 1995. Responses of gull kidneys and salt glands to NaCl loading. Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacologu 73, 1727-1732.
Bennett DC, Hughes MR, De Sobrino CN, Gray DA. 1997. Interaction of osmotic and volemic components in initiating salt-gland secretion in Pekin ducks. Auk 114, 242-248.
Ching AC, Hughes MR, Poon AM, Pang SF. 1999. Melatonin receptors and melatonin inhibition of duck salt gland secretion. General and Comparative Endocrinology 116, 229-240.
Bennett DC, Hughes MR, Elliott JE, Scheuhammer AM, Smits JE. 2000. Effect of cadmium on Pekin duck total body water, water flux, renal filtration, and salt gland function. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health A. 59, 43-56.
Hughes MR, Smits JE, Elliott JE, Bennett DC. 2000. Morphological and pathological effects of cadmium ingestion on Pekin ducks exposed to saline. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health A. 61, 591-608.
Hughes MR, Bennett DC, Gray DA, Sharp PJ, Scheuhammer AM, Elliott JE. 2003. Effects of cadmium ingestion on plasma and osmoregulatory hormone concentrations in male and female Pekin ducks. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health A 66, 565-579.
Hughes MR. 2003.Regulation of salt gland, gut and kidney interactions. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A 136, 507-524.
Bennett DC, Hughes MR. 2003. Comparison of renal and salt gland function in three species of wild ducks. Journal of Experimental Biology 206, 3273-3284.
Bennett DC, Gray DA, Hughes MR. 2003. Effect of saline intake on water flux and osmotic homeostasis in Pekin ducks (Anas platyrhynchos). Journal of Comparative Physiology B. 173, 27-36.
Bennett DC, Kojwang D, Sullivan TM, Gray DA, Hughes MR. 2003. Effect of saline acclimation on body water and sodium compartmentalization in Pekin ducks (Anas platyrhynchos). Journal of Comparative Physiology B. 173, 21-26.
Hughes MR, Bennett DC. 2004. Effect of saline intake, sex and season on Pekin duck osmoregulatory organ masses and comparison with wild Mallards. Canadian Journal of Zoology 82, 30-40.
Bennett DC, Gray DA, Sharp PJ, Hughes MR. 2005. Redistribution of extracellular water and sodium may contribute to saline tolerance in wild ducks. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology 78, 447-455.
Hughes MR, Bennett DC, Gray DA, Sharp PJ, Poon AM. 2006. Influences of sex and saline intake on diurnal changes in plasma melatonin and osmoregulatory hormones of Pekin ducks (Anas platyrhynchos). General Comparative Endocrinology 149,124-133
Hughes MR, Kitamura N, Bennett DC, Gray DA, Sharp PJ, Poon AM. 2007. Effect of melatonin on salt gland and kidney function of gulls, Larus glaucescens. General and Comparative Endocrinology 151, 300-307.
 |
| Oak Eggar Moth Lasiocampa quercus It will become obvious on reading this article why a photograph of this species is an appropriate one to remember the subject From Wikipedia ©Entomart |
While William Rowan was looking for a way to make a zoological living he worked a schoolmaster, latterly for a school year at Bedales in 1918-19.
Marianne Ainley in her biography wrote that Rowan arrived at Bedales School in Hampshire on 19 September 1918. She found in Rowan’s notes an account of the tragic death of a boy at the school:
…He liked all his colleagues and many of his pupils. He felt a special affinity for Woolacott, one of the big boys, a clever, reserved lad, keen on natural history, who had already published notes in the Entomologist. The two spent much time together, and from their discussions Rowan found the boy was practically a misogynist. This, he noted, "seems unnatural and calls for a deeper explanation.” Because of his busy schedule, however, Rowan had to postpone investigating the causes of the boy's attitude. Understandably, Rowan was distressed when, a few weeks later, Woolacott informed him he would probably be expelled. Rowan promptly arranged to see the headmaster [John Haden Badley who had, with his wife, founded the school] to intercede on Woolacott's behalf, but was too late. Woolacott shot himself that afternoon. Rowan blamed himself for not getting to the root of the boy's problem, and was most deeply touched to find that Woolacott had left a pile of beautifully made entomological slides, representing many hours of careful work, on Rowan’s desk.
Who was this budding entomologist, Woolacott? And what did reports of his death have to say?
First though it is worth pointing out that Bedales was a rare example at the time of a co-educational secondary school and I take it that the ‘misogyny’ on the part of Woolacott, was related to the presence of female pupils at the school and, perhaps, somewhat of a tradition of the boys who had objected to the presence of girls when they first appeared on the scene some years earlier.
It must also be borne in mind that the tragedy occurred on 4 November 1918, only six weeks after Rowan’s arrival. He had clearly got to know the boy’s interest in the natural world but had not had time to understand much of Woolacott’s past.
The Hampshire Telegraph of Friday 8 November had a short account of the coroner’s inquest held the day before.
STUDENT OF 17 SHOT DEAD.
A shocking tragedy occurred at Bedales School, Petersfield, on Monday afternoon, when a student named Harold Kingsley Woolacott, aged 17, was found dead in a dormitory with a bullet wound in his temple.
It appears that the deceased lad was about to leave the school, and on going to pack up his clothes we given a small rifle, which the Matron had been keeping for him for about two years. Shortly afterwards he was found as described with the rifle at his feet. Dr. Brownfield was summoned, but could only pronounce life extinct.
At an inquest yesterday afternoon a verdict of "Suicide whilst temporary insane" was returned...
The school magazine, the Bedales Record for 1918-19 also had an account:
The term was saddened by the death of Woolacott, as told on a later page. He was buried in Steep Churchyard, where now lie several of our boys, the coffin being carried by his fellow prefects and followed by his schoolfellows.
H. K. Woolacott joined the School in 1916 at a later age than most. He was a quiet introspective boy, given to melancholy moods, which were deepened by the absence of his parents in India and by the war. He would normally have left the School last Summer to begin his military service, but asked to stay on another term in order to be a prefect and try to do more for the School than he had done. But he did not prove strong enough to be in so responsible a position, and at the beginning of November it was decided, with his own concurrence, that he should leave then and begin his training at once. While packing his things, amongst them a miniature rifle which, like many others, he had brought here for practice on the range, and for which, unknown to us, he had some cartridges of his own, he must, in a moment's impulse, have shot himself through the head; when found, a few moments later, he was past all help. At the inquest neither the evidence nor his own diary could throw any light upon the motive, other than the boy's strange nature and his sense of failure at School, and no kind of blame was felt to attach to anyone else.
I would suggest that Rowan’s more succinct explanation for Woolacott’s departure from the school is the correct interpretation; he was being expelled and thus required to join the army seven days, as it happened, before the Armistice of 11 January.
Harold Kingsley Woolacott had indeed had notes published in The Entomologist. I have found two, both in the January 1918 edition.
In the early decades of the 20th century amateur entomology and especially lepidoptery was in its heyday.
Lasiocampa quercus is the Oak Eggar Moth. Melitaea aurinia, the Marsh Fritillary Butterffly, is now Euphydryas aurinia. Phragmatobia fuliginosa is the Ruby Tiger moth. Macrothylacia rubi is the Fox Moth. Manulea lurideola is the Common Footman Moth
As mentioned by the report in the school magazine Harold Woolacott’s parents were in India. He was born in Brixton, London in 1901 to John Evans Woolacott and his second wife, Angiolina Maria Emily Seneca. John Evans Woolacott (1861-1936) is described on his Wikpedia page as journalist, newspaper editor and political activist who worked first in London for the Central News Agency as lobby correspondent and then in Ireland, Morocco and Egypt. in 1895 he stood, unsuccessfully, for parliament as a member of the Independent Labour Party in the Rollox Division of Glasgow. During the 1890s he worked on The Democrat and was assistant editor of the Weekly Dispatch. His first wife died and he married Angiolina Seneca in 1897; he was 34 and she was 21. By 1903 he was assistant editor of The Economist. In 1908 he was elected president of the Institute of Journalists but then left for India where he was assistant editor of The Statesman in Calcutta. 1913 saw him as editor of the Bombay Gazette. That publication soon closed and he returned to UK. He swapped political allegiance being adopted as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Party but because of the outbreak of war no general election was held. Woolacott returned to India in 1916 (the year his son was sent to Bedales) working for The Pioneer in Allahabad and as a correspondent for The Times of London. By the time he had returned to UK in 1925 his politics had changed again, writing books opposed to political change in India. In 1929 he was appointed editor of The Bioscope, a weekly magazine devoted to the cinema. John Evans Wollacott died in Surrey in 1936.
Harold Woolacott’s mother, Angiolina, was the daughter of Alfonso and Eliza Seneca. Alfonso Seneca was Italian, a professional singer who appears in the local London newspapers of 1877 and 1878 performing regularly and frequently in concerts. Alfonso died in 1880. As far as I can see from the records John and Angiolina had no other children. Angiolina died in Surrey in 1934.
I have been able to find nothing else about the unhappy and clearly disturbed Harold Kinglsey Woolacott. I do not know if he ever accompanied his parents to India. It is clear that he entered Bedales when his parents left UK for the second time but where had he been educated until then? It was the norm for children of parents in India to either send or leave their children in UK when they were seven. The only clue as to young Woolacott’s location at any time is the address given in one of the articles in The Entomologist; in the summer of 1917 he was in St Merryn in Cornwall.
I have found a family tree online which includes a brother and sisters of John Evans Woolacott but not including John Evans himself. I do not know if Harold would have been in touch with members of his extended family while his parents were in India.
Harold Kingsley Woolacott’s tombstone can be found in the graveyard of All Saints in the village of Steep, near Petersfield. Reading his notes to The Entomologist I suspect the budding entomologist was a young scientist in the making. I can see why William Rowan, fondly remembered for his teaching and encouragement of birdwatching and photography in the school, was so upset by Woolacott’s utterly tragic death 106 years ago today.
 |
| Gravestone of Harold Kingsley Woolacott from findagrave.com |
Ainley MG. 1993. Restless Energy. A Biography of William Rowan 1891-1957. Montreal: Véhicule Press.
